Anyone going to play Vanguard when it's released? It 1/29 I think is the release date.
-Dilusion
Vanguard
Moderator: Staff
My thoughts on Vanguard (might get long)
I was in the beta phase 5 and played the retail version on Friday and Saturday. I didn't buy it, beta users got to play 3 days of retail for free. I disliked it during beta but gave it 2nd chance because some of my RL friends are playing it. After a second dose, I still disliked it and wont be purchasing it.
The game doesn't really offer anything new to the mmorpg genre. The diplomacy system is neat, but that alone wont keep anyone interested. The game has things borrowed from EQ and WoW, but doesn't improve upon what has been borrowed. The interface and the questing system makes the game feel like a WoW clone. The entire time I played, I thought to myself: Why should anyone play this game instead of WoW? Why would hardcore players from EQ or WoW switch to Vanguard? I was unable to come up with a strong argument. The only thing I can say is the game seems to promote grouping, rather than allowing you to solo your way to max level like you can in WoW. The reason I don't consider that a strong argument is because I have never enjoyed the leveling treadmill anyway. Gaining levels is a necessary evil that must be completed to get to "the good stuff".
The game is also plagued with many bugs. This thing should have stayed in beta for another 3 to 6 months. I remember one particular quest that had 2 objectives: 1. Find this guy, 2. then kill him. Well, I found him and killed his ass. I got credit for killing him, but not finding him. I had to abandon the quest 3 times to finally get lucky enough to complete it. I had another quest where I had to duel a guard, but was unable to attack him. Same story: abandoned the quest a few times and finally got lucky.
The game boasts of having great graphics, but most people wont have the horsepower to enjoy them. Remember the days of EQ raiding where everyone put the clipping plane to zero, stared at the floor or wall, turned off player names, and put all graphics settings to their lowest? Thats almost what I had to do to play Vanguard. My PC isnt bad ass, but its got respectable hardware. I have a Athlon 64 3000+, a gig of ddr400, a sata hdd, and a geforce 6800gt....and that wasn't good enough. Fuck that game. I could run it at 25fps, but it looked like dog shit. WoW runs at 70fps in 1280x1024 with all the sliders and aa at max. And honestly, WoW looks a lot better than Vanguard anyway. Not just graphically, but I also prefer the artistic style of WoW.
I even hated the map and mini map for Vanguard. I had to squint and look up close to see what direction I was heading in while looking at the mini map. Maybe its just me, but its difficult to tell. The triangle that represents you and the direction you are heading needs to be bigger. I was never able to find an option to adjust this.
You also get a sprint ability. You know how rogues can sprint in WoW? Well, all characters can use it every 5 mins or so. Guess what? If you press it, it wont let you run fast enough to get away from even the lowbie monsters. Its absolutely useless lol!
I know this is harsh, but there really is no reason to waste $50 on Vanguard. Once upon a time, this game might have actually been good. Then it was bought by Sony and rushed out the door. The lore feels rushed. Even the damn character creation got rushed. You can adjust your toon's eye shape and arm length and all sorts of other shit no one will ever notice, but you've only got 4 different hairstyles to choose from? Lame.
I was in the beta phase 5 and played the retail version on Friday and Saturday. I didn't buy it, beta users got to play 3 days of retail for free. I disliked it during beta but gave it 2nd chance because some of my RL friends are playing it. After a second dose, I still disliked it and wont be purchasing it.
The game doesn't really offer anything new to the mmorpg genre. The diplomacy system is neat, but that alone wont keep anyone interested. The game has things borrowed from EQ and WoW, but doesn't improve upon what has been borrowed. The interface and the questing system makes the game feel like a WoW clone. The entire time I played, I thought to myself: Why should anyone play this game instead of WoW? Why would hardcore players from EQ or WoW switch to Vanguard? I was unable to come up with a strong argument. The only thing I can say is the game seems to promote grouping, rather than allowing you to solo your way to max level like you can in WoW. The reason I don't consider that a strong argument is because I have never enjoyed the leveling treadmill anyway. Gaining levels is a necessary evil that must be completed to get to "the good stuff".
The game is also plagued with many bugs. This thing should have stayed in beta for another 3 to 6 months. I remember one particular quest that had 2 objectives: 1. Find this guy, 2. then kill him. Well, I found him and killed his ass. I got credit for killing him, but not finding him. I had to abandon the quest 3 times to finally get lucky enough to complete it. I had another quest where I had to duel a guard, but was unable to attack him. Same story: abandoned the quest a few times and finally got lucky.
The game boasts of having great graphics, but most people wont have the horsepower to enjoy them. Remember the days of EQ raiding where everyone put the clipping plane to zero, stared at the floor or wall, turned off player names, and put all graphics settings to their lowest? Thats almost what I had to do to play Vanguard. My PC isnt bad ass, but its got respectable hardware. I have a Athlon 64 3000+, a gig of ddr400, a sata hdd, and a geforce 6800gt....and that wasn't good enough. Fuck that game. I could run it at 25fps, but it looked like dog shit. WoW runs at 70fps in 1280x1024 with all the sliders and aa at max. And honestly, WoW looks a lot better than Vanguard anyway. Not just graphically, but I also prefer the artistic style of WoW.
I even hated the map and mini map for Vanguard. I had to squint and look up close to see what direction I was heading in while looking at the mini map. Maybe its just me, but its difficult to tell. The triangle that represents you and the direction you are heading needs to be bigger. I was never able to find an option to adjust this.
You also get a sprint ability. You know how rogues can sprint in WoW? Well, all characters can use it every 5 mins or so. Guess what? If you press it, it wont let you run fast enough to get away from even the lowbie monsters. Its absolutely useless lol!
I know this is harsh, but there really is no reason to waste $50 on Vanguard. Once upon a time, this game might have actually been good. Then it was bought by Sony and rushed out the door. The lore feels rushed. Even the damn character creation got rushed. You can adjust your toon's eye shape and arm length and all sorts of other shit no one will ever notice, but you've only got 4 different hairstyles to choose from? Lame.
My take was similar Kyokan.
The game really has changed since beta, in some cases for the worse. They ripped a lot of concepts from WoW, and tried to implement them the exact same way. My guess is the thinking was: How could 8 million subscribers be wrong? Well that thinking sucks for MMO's in many cases, and in Vanguards case it sucks royally.
The graphics alone were enough for me to throw it in the trash can. People boast about how "beautiful" it is, and I just don't see it. I do happen to run an extreme system... Quad-Core CPU, with 8800 GTX single or SLI, and that game crushed my system's performance. In games where I achieve 100-300fps, I could barely break 30 in Vanguard with the settings at any 'decent' level. It was a shitty reminder of the old Luclin EQ launch days where people spent hundreds of dollars for new hardware just to 'see' the new models, and they still sucked. Someday MMO builders will learn that polygon count isn't everything.
The playability sucks too ... the game lag skips a lot, mobs warp around, and the texture tearing on some of the body models is just downright horrible, not to mention some of the graphics for the mobs just flat out suck. Even in the newbie areas where you'd expect the user to be graphically excited, since it's their first "start" into the game the graphics were just complete garbage.
There is another factor too people havn't even thought about, and that's patchability. Their patch/download system is garbage too. Every day in the last few weeks of beta it seemed like there was another 100-400MB patch. I mean com'n, it was taking between 20 minutes and 1.5 hours almost every single day just to patch the game. I can only imagine how the first few months of retail are going to be... I feel really bad for the folks who have slow internet connections, not to mention the game is almost 20 f'ing gigs to begin with!
It was a good concept... and yah Brad and his crew may have been the "original" people of EverQuest ... but after seeing Vanguard and all of the potential it could have had, I've come to the conclusion that Brad just got lucky with EverQuest because it was first to market, not because he was a good game designer.
-V
The game really has changed since beta, in some cases for the worse. They ripped a lot of concepts from WoW, and tried to implement them the exact same way. My guess is the thinking was: How could 8 million subscribers be wrong? Well that thinking sucks for MMO's in many cases, and in Vanguards case it sucks royally.
The graphics alone were enough for me to throw it in the trash can. People boast about how "beautiful" it is, and I just don't see it. I do happen to run an extreme system... Quad-Core CPU, with 8800 GTX single or SLI, and that game crushed my system's performance. In games where I achieve 100-300fps, I could barely break 30 in Vanguard with the settings at any 'decent' level. It was a shitty reminder of the old Luclin EQ launch days where people spent hundreds of dollars for new hardware just to 'see' the new models, and they still sucked. Someday MMO builders will learn that polygon count isn't everything.
The playability sucks too ... the game lag skips a lot, mobs warp around, and the texture tearing on some of the body models is just downright horrible, not to mention some of the graphics for the mobs just flat out suck. Even in the newbie areas where you'd expect the user to be graphically excited, since it's their first "start" into the game the graphics were just complete garbage.
There is another factor too people havn't even thought about, and that's patchability. Their patch/download system is garbage too. Every day in the last few weeks of beta it seemed like there was another 100-400MB patch. I mean com'n, it was taking between 20 minutes and 1.5 hours almost every single day just to patch the game. I can only imagine how the first few months of retail are going to be... I feel really bad for the folks who have slow internet connections, not to mention the game is almost 20 f'ing gigs to begin with!
It was a good concept... and yah Brad and his crew may have been the "original" people of EverQuest ... but after seeing Vanguard and all of the potential it could have had, I've come to the conclusion that Brad just got lucky with EverQuest because it was first to market, not because he was a good game designer.
-V
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darkreborn
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Vanguard
Veratu wrote:My take was similar Kyokan.
It was a good concept... and yah Brad and his crew may have been the "original" people of EverQuest ... but after seeing Vanguard and all of the potential it could have had, I've come to the conclusion that Brad just got lucky with EverQuest because it was first to market, not because he was a good game designer.
-V
Brent pretty much nailed it on the head with this. I got all the way to lvl 40ish before i passed out from the warping and the game bugs. All in hopeing and wishing they would fix the basic issues buging the game were even more frusterating than playing.
About the only game that looks good comming up in the semi near future would be Warhammer. Time will tell i guess
O btw hiya Agony i hope all is well and you all are still doing what you do best.
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